One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus on
centralized design and implementation, in which the operating system is
maintained in a central repository, and discussed on centrally maintained
lists. This allows for a high level of coordination between authors of
various components of the system, and allows policies to be enforced over
the entire system, covering issues ranging from architecture to style.
However, as the FreeBSD developer community has grown, and the rate of
both mailing list traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it
difficult even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all
the work going on in the tree.

The FreeBSD Development Status Report attempts to address this
problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers to make the broader
community aware of their on-going work on FreeBSD, both in and out of the
central source repository. For each project and sub-project, a one
paragraph summary is included, indicating progress since the last summary.
If it is a new project, or if a project has not submitted any prior status
reports, a short description may precede the status information.

For more exact guidelines on how to write good status reports,
please consult our recommendations.

Periodically special status reports are also prepared and
published. One of those are the developer summit reports.
Developer summits are places where developers meet in person to
discuss issues related to the project. They are definitely worth
attending if one is interested in making significant contributions
to the Project and they are open to anybody!

These status reports may be reproduced in whole or in part, as long as the
source is clearly identified and appropriate credit given.